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TRP: Ba'ob and Hansel (Wolf Druid)
ABBY Day 262, woods outside the sanctuary. The Sanctuary was more bustling than Ba'ob had ever seen it before. So many people, going everywhere-- it was a little much. So he told Azriel he wanted to go for a walk, and took off soon as permission was given. The woods were much the same since he'd last been there. But still different. There was a nest in a tree where Ba'ob used to hide out now and then. A little hollow he'd slept in was taken over by skunks (it was a good thing his animal-speech spell still worked there). A clearing torn into the earth where the orc army had been. Ba'ob had been stupid, wandering off on his own. Quietly he slipped back through the trees, back towards the Sanctuary. Towards safety. Wasn't quite there when he saw someone else moving through the woods. Orc, he realized, heart pounding. But a second later, he recognized it. It was that orc. He hadn't died. Ba'ob found himself slowing, batting at the branches on the trees to announcing his presence. Wasn't entirely sure why. IZZY Hansel needed a bit of a break. Not an actual break, because there wasn't time for breaks -- but a little room to breathe and do his own thing. People always needed firewood, and now that the Sanctuary's usual residents were back, on top of the small army they'd mustered, they were running short. He could always chop firewood. He had a nice little stack of it built up and was taking a breather from his breather to chug some water -- axe lodged in the stump he'd picked as a chopping block -- when he heard some twiggy sounds behind him, and turned to see that kid. The weird one. Ba'ob. His eyes were drawn to the arm straight off, and he made himself look away. Was just fuckin' unpleasant. He kept wondering if Amari or someone could take care of it, grow it back. Kid had been skittish as all hell, last time Hansel had seen him, and he wasn't sure how he was doing now, so he kept his voice soft and quiet, and raised a hand to acknowledge him. "Hey. Goin' for a nice walk, huh?" he tried. God, how the fuck did conversations work, anyway. ABBY Ba'ob kept his eyes locked on the orc. Stayed back. Wolf though, wolf didn't share any of his reservations. She bounded forwards and started nosing at the orc-- Hansel's hands. Slowly Ba'ob edged out after her. Not too close. Glanced uneasily at the axe. Those hurt. Hugged his stump to his chest and nodded slightly. 'Cept he needed to get better about words. "Yeah," he said softly. "Good walk. I had a good walk." IZZY Hansel ruffled the Wolf's ears automatically, forgetting it wasn't just a regular dog. Well, shit, she acted like one -- may as well. He noticed the kid eyeballing his axe and frowned, first thinking he should grab it and put it away, but grabbing it in the first place might spook Ba'ob. Might ought to just leave it alone. He knelt down, kind of to make himself smaller and hopefully keep the kid from feeling all threatened, but to scritch the wolf's neck, too. "Hey," he commented, picking up on the way Ba'ob corrected himself, "ain't like I fuckin' talk right, either. I got what you meant first time." Maybe that Azriel kid was trying to get Ba'ob to talk all proper, but he kinda seemed like a poncy little shit. ABBY Ba'ob shook his head slightly. "I am a person. I need to-- to act like it." It was getting easier. Words coming more naturally. (Sometimes Ba'ob wished he could fight it-- but how did you fight learning?) He didn't want to think about that though so he nodded at the wolf. "She wants food." Not that she wasn't happy with the attention either, wagging her tail and tongue lolling out happily. Hansel always was feeding him though. Feeding the both of them. IZZY Hansel shrugged. Eh, acting like a person wasn't all it was cracked up to be, all the time. Wondered if maybe the kid would have an easier time with Nighthand, like Theo did -- 'course he'd only be able to use it with some of them, so it wasn't exactly a solution. "Yeah I got some jerky, I think." He reached into his bag to pull some out some smoked venison, halting for a moment when he had the brief urge to tell the wolf now sit, lay down, roll over, or whatever other dog tricks came to mind. Not actually a dog. Yep. Probably wouldn't take too kindly to that shit. He just offered it to her instead, looking back up to the kid to add, "Got some soup if you're hungry, too, or cold or anything." He patted the fur-wrapped ceramic on his hip. "All veg, though. Know you like some meat." ABBY Ba'ob shifted restlessly. It'd... been safe so far. And he was hungry (he was always hungry). Still couldn't quite shake the voice in the back of his mind. Could ignore it, though. He edged closer. Close enough to touch. (Close enough to grab.) Couldn't look. Ba'ob stared at the ground, the trees, the wolf-- anything but Hansel. "Anything is fine." He didn't have a right to be picky. IZZY Huh. He studied Ba'ob for a moment, then held the carafe out at arm's reach, so the kid wouldn't have to get any closer. Had to be real careful. He was fuckin' stubborn, though. He'd get through. "Have as much as y'want. Growin' boy, and all." ABBY Ba'ob glanced up just enough to see it, just enough to be able to carefully take it. (Grip with his one hand, use the stump to brace, hold it against his chest and back off.) "Thank you," he said quietly. He could go now. Find Azriel and hug him and just forget about the orc-trail he'd found. Except. Azriel was busy. Everyone was. And... this wasn't so bad. Ba'ob had a little space, he had food. He'd been in worse spots. So, he gingerly settled in on the ground, pushing the wolf away when she came to sniff at his carafe. "It's not meat you won't like it," he told her. No magic though, she didn't understand. So he rolled his eyes and opened it up, let her take a couple laps and find it out for herself. "Told you," he said as she pawed at her snout, looking disgusted. "It's person food." IZZY Hansel grinned a bit, crookedly, and dug out some more jerky to wiggle at the wolf. "How come you got to be friends with a wolf, anyway?" he tried. Seemed kinda like some druid shit, actually. Fuck, maybe he could have a wolf friend now. That'd be neat. ABBY "She chose me," Ba'ob said, smiling a little as the wolf perked up, bounding over to get the jerky she was being offered. That wasn't a full explanation though. Ba'ob chewed on his lip for a second, trying to think of how to explain. "My first memories are with wolves," he said softly. "I was... happy with them. And after the wolves there was... orcs." He hunched his shoulders, ducking his head. "Didn't like them. They... they gave me into the people's world." He rubbed at his arm. The missing one. "The slave world." "I escaped though," he said, with quiet viciousness. "And so I went back to the wolves. But... I changed too much. I was too... elf. So they rejected me." The wolf glanced back, and then trotted back over to Ba'ob, nosing at him and dropping her half-eaten jerky in his lap. Ba'ob smiled slightly, slinging his arm over her neck. "Not her though. She stayed." IZZY Hansel was quiet for a moment, slightly dumbfounded. Fuckin' ... so he was really just a feral goddamn kid. Well. All right, then. He wondered if some elf family had ditched their baby, or if they'd been killed by animals or an orcish raiding party, or something -- like Goro's dad's family. He didn't think Ba'ob was a wood elf, though. Weird. At any rate, made a lot of fucking sense, the kid's attitude towards orcs. All things considered. Hansel didn't really have anything he could say to that. "S'good you got someone, then. Makes everything easier, havin' someone, no matter what happens." He thought about how long orcs lived, how long elves lived. How long wolves lived. He didn't say anything. ABBY Ba'ob nodded. Yeah. Wolf'd been with him through some real rough times now. While he was running-- before he'd met Jasper. With Bala. "Got people now too," he said. "I love her but... she doesn't understand sometimes." An animal. Not a person. Ba'ob resented her for it sometimes. And then felt bad about resenting and tried to make up for it. And the wolf only could understand something was wrong. IZZY "Yeah," Hansel said slowly. He hadn't had the impression that the kid cared for people that much, but he'd been alone, himself, enough to know that you needed them. It'd been a bad time for him when he'd only had Jonn, when he'd been broken. "Better to have a pack, yeah?" ABBY Ba'ob flinched a little at the wording. "I'm not an animal," he said quietly, staring at the ground. Not right now, anyway. IZZY Hansel shrugged one shoulder. "Hey. I used to be a sailor. Call it a crew or a pack or a gang, s'just a word. Means the same thing." ABBY Ba'ob's hand gripped into the wolf's fur. Except 'pack' was what they called wolves. Ba'ob didn't have a pack. Not any more. Ba'ob was a person. Had two arms two legs and magic pulsing in his-- --chest. His furry, wolf chest. Not again not again. The wolf jumped back, pinning her ears back and growling. Ba'ob whined, cowering against the ground. Change-back-change-back-change-back. IZZY Hansel noticed the kid was getting a little agitated-looking, and frowned to himself, wondering what he'd said wrong, here, what he could do to fix it -- really just kinda seemed best to back off, with Ba'ob. Maybe go track down Larkin's boyfriend, or Ombre, and see if they could help the kid. Before he could do that, though, the kid fuckin' turned into a wolf. Hansel just kind of stared. He should grab his trident, except that it wasn't a real wolf, it was just the kid, and he wasn't a threat and had to be treated gentle, and the uncertainty just made Hansel freeze up dumbly. He was used to this kind of thing with Mishka, and with Roddy, now, but it didn't usually just ... happen. And with the spell they had, it still had to be a person. Nah, this was more like some Ombre shit. "Oh, shit," he blurted out. "Fuck, kid, you some kinda fuckin' ... wolf kitsune or some shit? Is that a fuckin' thing?" ABBY Ba'ob whined and shook his head. Finally got the magic to pulse to his human heartbeat and-- --he was back to two legs, two (one) arm. Pointy ears, smooth skin. Elf. He hugged his knees to his chest and buried them there, trying to hold back sobs. Felt the wolf licking his head after a second. She'd just been growling at him and now she was trying to comfort him. (She didn't understand. She was just a wolf. Telling himself that didn't help.) IZZY "Oh, uh." Shit. Well. Kid was crying now. That wasn't usually what happened when someone fuckin' shapeshifted or whatever. Usually it seemed real fuckin' cool. And he'd been a wolf, and all -- had to like wolves, didn't he? Hansel didn't get it. He had no fucking idea what to do, here. "Uhh." He scooted a little closer and reached out to carefully pat the kid's shoulder. He wanted to grab him in a hug, because he couldn't stand to see someone cry, but he thought that'd actually just make things worse. Fuck, he didn't know what else to do. ABBY Ba'ob's head snapped up. He bared his teeth and growled. It tapered off as he realized what he'd done. Still such an animal. He stayed in a ball, covering his head. Deserved hits now. Supposed to be tamed but he's not. IZZY "Yep," Hansel said, pulling back but not going far. "Yep, fair. Uh." Shit, the way the kid was hiding his head was fuckin' uncomfortably familiar. "Hey, you're all right. I growl at folks sometimes too, eh?" ABBY "It's animal." Ba'ob didn't look up. "Wrong." Like his words. Too upset to get them right. IZZY "Aw, hey, uh." This was a losing fuckin' battle. "Nah. Listen, I bet uh, I bet that ain't what Ombre or Azriel'd say, right?" He didn't figure he could comfort the kid, but maybe he could act like he was just on the same side as the people Ba'ob did like. ABBY "Azriel doesn't like it." Ombre... had pinched his cheeks and cooed over him. (It had been irritating then. Now it made him feel homesick for who he'd been.) But he wasn't Ombre's, he was Azriel's. "Azriel likes... clean. And polite. And not... not an animal." IZZY "Oh, uh. Well." Well, fuck. "Fuckin' ..." Hm, probably shouldn't say fuck'im, then. "I dunno, kid, you been living with him a long time, now, yeah? Probably woulda kicked you out or some shit if he really didn't like it." Hopefully that was true, or would at least sound it. ABBY Kick him out? Ba'ob felt sick at the thought. (Then he'd have to find someone else-- didn't want to end up with someone like Bala or Soklov again. He hunched into a smaller ball. "Not... not like that. Belong to Azriel. Have to do what he says." IZZY "D'you ..." Hansel hesitated. "D'you want to belong to him? You could just fuckin' leave, if you wanna, kid. I'll help you out. You can stay with Ombre. Don't gotta belong to anyone." ABBY Ba'ob cringed and finally looked up just enough to peek at Hansel with one eye. "Do gotta." That wasn't good. Ba'ob licked his lips and tried again. "I'm... a wild animal. I need taming. Azriel..." Azriel was good to Ba'ob. Ba'ob had food, Ba'ob had a good place to sleep, Azriel never hurt Ba'ob, and even encouraged him when Ba'ob said things he wanted to do. "He's better than I deserve." IZZY Hansel winced. He shifted to settle, crossing his legs, and gently said, "People used to fuckin' call me an animal, too, kid. Just 'cause people say it don't mean it's true. Who told you that, huh?" ABBY "Bala. Azriel. Lotta others." Bry too. "It's... what happens. When you're like me." IZZY "Bala." Hansel thought a second. "That's the bitch that took your ring, yeah? Like you can fuckin' believe what she told you." He scoffed. "Kid, hey. What happens when you're like you is that people lie t'you and try to fuck with you." ABBY Ba'ob rubbed his stump. "Asked her to," he said quietly. "Begged her to. I'm a wild animal and I need taming. She saw that." Azriel didn't. Ombre didn't. Nobody else did. And Ba'ob hated how grateful he was for it. "Maybe I deserve it," he said, shooting Hansel a look out of the corners of his eyes. "Maybe I should be treated like that." IZZY "Aw, kid." He winced again. "Nah. Hey. No." He forgot the point he'd been trying to make, about not being able to believe shitty people, and couldn't help but scoot closer again, putting his hand back on Ba'ob's shoulded to pat him gently. "No one deserves that, okay?" ABBY Ba'ob saw it coming this time. Tensed up and looked down, but allowed. It was heavy, and warm and... it wasn't a hit. "I do," he said with quiet viciousness. IZZY "Nah." Since he didn't freak out, Hansel let his hand rest on the kid's shoulder. "What d'you reckon makes you so special, huh?" he prodded gently. ABBY Ba'ob remained tense and not looking at Hansel. Shrugged. "Maybe I'm not." IZZY "Guess it's fine, then, eh?" Hansel tried to sound a little teasing, and hoped the kid didn't think he was being made fun of for it. "Guess you don't deserve shit no one else does." ABBY Ba'ob tilted his head to give Hansel a sullen look. "Or other people deserve it too." IZZY "Oh yeah? Who, you reckon? Ombre?" ABBY Ba'ob took a second to think. He knew who came to mind first-- but it felt like betrayal to say it. Wasn't though. It was the truth. "No. Bry." He tilted his chin to finally stare at Hansel defiantly. "She was slave too. With the elves. Till she freed herself with bedsheets and the rafters." IZZY Hansel stared at him, blinked for a second. He always thought it was good to try to relate to folks, share shit, bond with'em. But he didn't think Ba'ob much cared if he lived or died, so telling the kid that he'd very nearly freed himself that same way didn't seem like it'd fuckin' ... matter. "Sounds like she did the best she could," he said quietly. ABBY Ba'ob nodded slightly, the defiance evaporating out of his frame. "She was good to me too," he said quietly, picking at the grass. IZZY Hansel patted his shoulder, still being gentle. "Sorry you lost her, kid." He wasn't sure where to go from there, so he tried, "D'you ... wanna tell me about her? The good parts?" ABBY Ba'ob kept picking at the grass. "She... tried to protect me. Even though I did stuff I knew would get us in trouble. Once... I shifted the bookcase and scratched the back of it all up. And she helped me put it back. It was... a long time before that got discovered. And she said she did it." And Ba'ob had did what he could while she screamed and cried while her arm burned. "I miss her." IZZY "Good to have people watchin' your back. Bet you woulda done the same for her, too. Try to protect folks like Ombre and Jasper, right?" he hinted, not pushing too hard on the idea that Ba'ob wasn't any more deserving of suffering than any of the people he liked. ABBY Ba'ob hunched his shoulders. "Can't now." He rubbed at his arm. "Wasn't good at it anyway," he muttered. Lot better at getting into trouble than out of it. IZZY "Dunno, you can turn into a wolf, seems like," Hansel pointed out. "Seems damn useful." ABBY Ba'ob shook his head. "Can't do that." He should rephrase. "I'm not supposed to do that. It's... animal. I'm a person." He hugged his knees. "I can't... I can't be an animal." IZZY "Nah, nah. Y'can, though. Hey." He wondered if Ba'ob'd like the Lady. Or if she'd like him. "Hey, you're a fuckin' druid, ain'tcha? Wildshape shit. Fuckin' killer, kid, me too, apparently." He patted Ba'ob's shoulder, companionably this time, and let his hand drop away to see if the kid's have any reaction to it. ABBY Ba'ob was getting... used to Hansel's affection. Still didn't like the movement in the corner of his eye, flinching a little till he recognized the hand was being pulled away. "Druid?" Ba'ob had heard stories about those. Hadn't thought too much about if he believed they were real. "The people that turn into animals," he said slowly. IZZY "Yeah, that's it. I mean, I can't fuckin' do it, yet. My, uh." Shit, the hell was the Lady to him, anyway? "My friend's a druid -- she says I'm a fuckin' baby and I'll learn how to do it. Guess you're already there, though." That was neat. Maybe Ba'ob magic got an extra kick when he lost his arm, or something. Eh, or the kid was just fuckin' better than he was. That was neat, too. ABBY Ba'ob hugged his knees and buried his face in them. This wasn't right. Sitting here talking like this was... this was normal. "I'm not supposed to be an animal," he repeated. "Not... not right." IZZY "Nah, but ... you are, though," Hansel said awkwardly. "The druid I know, she says it's, uh ... like a thing that's just in you. It's, y'know. Natural, and shit. It's right." ABBY Ba'ob shook his head. "Don't want it." Hansel wasn't a slave. Hansel could do that. Ba'ob shouldn't. Ba'ob couldn't have this. (Except he did now.) IZZY "Guess you can just, uh ... not, then?" He rubbed the back of his neck. "Think it's real fuckin' neat, though, that you can. You oughta show Ombre. Bet she'd love it." He just kept banking on other people having a better time talking to the kid than he did. ABBY Oh. Yeah, Ombre might like it. Maybe Ba'ob could turn into a fox too now, and they could hang out and... but he wasn't Ombre's. (Azriel might not mind if he stayed out of the house--) Ba'ob was getting ahead of himself. "Yeah. I can... not." IZZY "Yeah." Was fuckin' sad, though. "Maybe just, uh -- one more time, huh?" He backed off a little bit before pushing himself up, offering the kid a hand -- mindful of which one -- but not really expecting him to take it. "I'll help you find Ombre, yeah? Show off for her a li'l bit." ABBY Ba'ob hesitated before slowly climbing to his feet. Didn't accept the help-- didn't need it. Tried to decide what to do. Azriel didn't like him an animal. But he could not be around Azriel during it? And Hansel was telling him to do it. (And Ombre'd be excited. Think it was really cute. Maybe she'd shapeshift too and they could be animals together for a bit.) "Okay," he said quietly. ABBY END IZZY Title: Wolf Druid. Summary: Ba'ob accidentally wildshapes, which Hansel thinks is pretty neat. Ba'ob disagrees, but after some bonding(?) he goes along with Hansel's suggestion to show Ombre. Category:Text Roleplay